Fusion Garage

We had high hopes for the coming availability of the JooJoo tablet when we heard that the Fusion Garage was planning on shipping out at the end of this month, but we’ve just been told that due to a “manufacturing issue” shipping will be unfortunately delayed until March 25th. PR note after the break.

The iPad may have taken the media by storm, but the JooJoo, formerly known as the CrunchPad, is back, and hot on Apple’s heels. The JooJoo’s starting off full production, that’s right and maker Fusion Garage has announced that the product is set to start shipping this month.

The TechCrunch/Fusion Garage saga continues, and as predicted the lawsuit Michael Arrington brought against his former partners over the CrunchPad/JooJoo tablet is only the start of the mud-slinging. Fusion Garage have released a public rebuttal to Arrington's comments, suggesting that they do, in fact, own the IP involved, that they have already received $3m in funding with another round imminent, and that the TechCrunch founder's complaints are naught but "the sad rants of a person championing a losing cause".

As expected, Michael Arrington and TechCrunch have filed a federal lawsuit against Fusion Garage, over the hotly contested CrunchPad/JooJoo web-tablet project. The lawsuit - which you can see here - accuses Fusion Garage of "violation of the Lanham Act, breach of fiduciary duty, misappropriation of business ideas, fraud and deceit, and unfair competition" and cites not only correspondence between the two organizations but content from Fusion Garage's now-deleted blog. Arrington also runs through eight other points, including a passing spank to other blogs that "link to the [JooJoo] pre-sale site without disclosing [Fusion Garage's financial situation] to readers".

TechCrunch's erstwhile partners Fusion Garage are showing off what they say is their own hardware and software design, and rather than CrunchPad they're naming it JooJoo. JooJoo has a 12.1-inch capacitive touchscreen - the first of its type in the world, Chandra Rathakrishnan claims - and a web-centric OS.